Boulder High Students Plan Alternative Pledge Of Allegiance

Emma Martens, 17, president of Boulder High School's Student Worker club is organizing a protest at Boulder High School Thursday September 27th to change the school policy on reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Sammy Dallal / Daily Camera

Boulder High School students will stage the first of what could become many Pledge-of-Allegiance protests Thursday in the school courtyard.

Members of the activist club "Student Worker" [there's an oxymoron--ed.] are calling on students to leave class every Thursday at 8:30 a.m. — when the pledge is recited over the intercom — and rally in the courtyard to say a revised version of the pledge.

Club President Emma Martens, who's leading the protest, wrote this new version: "I pledge of allegiance to the flag and my constitutional rights with which it comes. And to the diversity, in which our nation stands, one nation, part of one planet, with liberty, freedom, choice and justice for all."

Martens said her group is concerned that the traditional pledge read daily at the start of second period classes takes away from school time. She also said the phrase, "one nation, under God," violates the separation of church and state.

"Boulder High has a highly diverse population, not all of whom believe in God, or One God," she wrote in an e-mail to the Camera.

"We didn't think it was fair for the whole school to have to listen to it," Martens said between classes today. "It's disrespectful and in complete violation of the separation of church and state. It's almost religious oppression."

Yes--I'm sure the level of religious oppression in Boulder is reaching intolerable proportions.

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